More charter schools in Detroit? State’s largest authorizer considers contracts for three schools

After several years in which only a handful of new charter schools opened in the city of Detroit, three new charter schools are being considered by Central Michigan University, the state’s largest authorizer.

The slowdown in new charter schools in the last few years came as critics ramped up pressure on authorizers, accusing them of opening too many schools and creating financial problems for district and charter schools alike. A spokesperson for Central Michigan said the university had not deliberately slowed the pace of new charter schools, but had just not received applications from schools it wanted to support.

The potential resurgence of charter authorizations in the city is thanks to a first-of-its-kind reportpublished late last year, said Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies. The report shows 10 city neighborhoods where it’s extremely difficult to find a seat in a quality school, and in some neighborhoods, more than 3,000 K-12 students are without a quality school nearby.

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“MAPSA agrees with several of the recommendations made in the … report released in December, especially the notion that we need to do everything possible to ensure that every child in Detroit is receiving a quality education, in a quality school,” he said. “This will involve opening more quality schools, particularly at the elementary level.”

Quisenberry said authorizers like Central Michigan and Grand Valley State universities are taking the report’s recommendations seriously and are seeking groups who can create “higher performing educational opportunities for students and families in and around Detroit.”

Janelle Brzezinski, director of communications at Central Michigan’s center for charter schools, said when deciding where to put the new charters, the university will use the report, which shows neighborhoods like Finney, Chadsey, and Grandmont in dire need of schools. In the past, charters have been criticized for flooding neighborhoods that already have many schools instead of opening in neighborhoods with a demonstrated need, leaving families to travel long distances to attend.

Brzezinski said the potential schools will undergo a “rigorous” review, with consideration for a school’s education program and the community’s need for a school.

Central Michigan is considering three new schools in the city: Bridge Academy, a diverse community school with a program focused on developing good character; Greenfield Academy, which intends to emphasize reading proficiency, and Phalen Leadership Academy, which will be modeled after a network of schools in Indianapolis run by Earl Phalen, a nationally recognized educator and advocate.

The Phalen Leadership Academy wouldn’t be the first for Phalen in the area: three charters in the city are controlled by Phalen’s management company, but are sitting in limbo as the Detroit Public Schools Community District considers whether to continue authorizing charter schools.

Bridge Academy was approved by Central Michigan’s Board of Trustees in December to continue through the evaluation process, while decisions on whether to continue review for Phalen Leadership Academy and Greenfield Academy are expected later this month.

Whether the schools will be allowed to settle in Detroit isn’t yet a sure thing. There are currently no new contracts on the table for the upcoming school year, and the earliest that Bridge Academy would be allowed to take root in the city would be fall 2019, Brzezinski said.

Grand Valley says it has no plans at this time to open any charter schools during the 2018 or 2019 school years within the city, but a university official said the charter school office is always considering applications for potential schools.

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“My son keeps asking ‘where am I going to school next year?’” parent Maria Koliantz told Chalkbeat last week.

Koliantz, who has two children in the Montessori program at Maybury Elementary School in Southwest Detroit, said a sense of brewing change has been affecting parents and teachers.

“I just keep trying to assure him,” she said of her son. “But … I hate that the uncertainty has affected him.”

But Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says there are no plans to move existing programs. Questioned by Koliantz at a school board community meeting Tuesday night, Vitti assured her the district would only add new programs, not close existing ones.

“We have no intention of discontinuing that program,” he said. “It’s a vehicle to recruit parents to the school system. I don’t think you’re going to see anything but expansion.”

Since his arrival in Detroit last spring, Vitti has talked about the need to give every school in the district a distinct identity, with some schools focusing on math and technology and others perhaps developing a focus on creative writing.

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Vitti revealed Tuesday morning that the district is considering eventually creating three arts schools for children who’ve been identified as gifted or talented.

New Montessori schools are also on the table, he said. “The new schools will be announced by the end of March as we work towards ensuring that every school has a identifiable and distinct program to improve performance and enrollment.”

Freestanding Montessori schools could represent a new chapter for a program that was launched in Detroit two years ago as a hybrid system, with Montessori classrooms operating next to traditional classrooms in a handful schools.

The program, which allows children to learn at their own pace in mixed-age classrooms, started in 2016 with classrooms serving pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, as well as some students in grades 1-3 at Spain, Maybury and Edison elementary schools. The program more than doubled in size in 2017, adding classrooms in the first three schools and expanding into three more — Chrysler, Palmer Park and Vernor elementary schools.

But while the current structure at the six schools has been popular with some parents, it has also created some difficulties.

The Montessori program is run by a director, Nicola Turner, who hires teachers for the program, oversees their training, and supports them as they implement the Montessori curriculum. But those teachers also work for their school principals — a dynamic that can create complications.

In some schools, there has been tension between parents and teachers affiliated with the Montessori program and those connected to traditional classrooms. Since the Montessori programs tend to have more teachers and fewer students than traditional classrooms, that’s raised issues of fairness and equity.

The current setup has also created challenges aligning the Montessori curriculum with the structure and schedules of a traditional school. In an ideal Montessori classroom, for example, students would have an uninterrupted three-hour block to work on their core lessons, but that isn’t always possible in a school where many factors determine when students can have lunch, go to recess or take art and music classes.

Freestanding Montessori schools could avoid some of those problems — and potentially offer some advantages.

“We could do after-school programs that were Montessori-specific,” said Yolanda King, who has a son in the program at Spain Elementary and a younger child she hopes to enroll next year. Special classes like art, music and gym “could be more aligned to Montessori” in a freestanding school, she said, suggesting “yoga programs and whole food programs.”

Turner, the Montessori program director, declined to comment about the possible changes but an email she sent to parents this month indicates they were fairly divided about the prospect of freestanding schools.

Nearly half — 48 percent — said they preferred keeping Montessori classrooms in their current schools while 37 percent liked the idea of a Montessori school. About 15 percent did not indicate a preference.

Dan Yowell is among parents who’ve raised concerns that freestanding schools might feel removed from the rest of the district.

“We liked the fact that [Montessori] is accessible to people all over the city,” said Yowell, whose son is in the program at Spain.

A freestanding Montessori school “has a feeling that it’s more exclusive,” Yowell said. “I don’t want it to be perceived as something that only certain people can access.”

Spain, in Detroit’s midtown neighborhood, is one of two schools with Montessori classrooms that has enough space to dramatically expand the program. The other one is the Palmer Park Academy, which is in northwest Detroit.

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“An 80 percent statewide graduation rate is a new watermark for our schools. They’ve worked hard to steadily improve,” state Superintendent Brian Whiston said in a statement.

“This is another important step in helping Michigan become a Top 10 education state in 10 years. We aren’t there yet, so we need to keep working and moving forward,” he said.

But statewide, the number of students ready for college based on their scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test was about 35 percent, underscoring the fact that graduation rate is not necessarily a great measure of school success. Schools looking to raise graduation rates can find ways to make it easier for students to earn credits toward graduation and, unlike some states, Michigan does not require students to pass graduation exams.

The result is that more students are graduating from high school — but might not be ready to do college work.

In Detroit, graduation rates in the city’s main district remained largely steady, with a little more than three-quarters of its students graduating after four years. But the number of students who were ready for college dropped almost a point to 12.3 percent last year. While most students take the SAT in 11th grade as part of the state’s school testing program, that’s an indication students graduating from high school may not have been adequately prepared for college.

The state dropout rate remained largely unchanged at almost nine percent.

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Detroit’s main district had the highest four-year graduation rates compared to other large districts, but more district students dropped out of school than in the previous year. More than 10 percent of Detroit students dropped out of high school in the 2016-17 school year, a slight increase from last year, according to state data.

But in spite of steady dropout rates and relatively low college readiness numbers, state officials were upbeat about the graduation results.

“This is the first time the statewide four-year graduation rate has surpassed 80 percent since we started calculating rates by cohorts eleven years ago,” said Tom Howell, director of the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information, which tracks school data. “This increase is in line with how the statewide graduation rate has been trending gradually upward.”

Search below to see the four-year graduation rates and college readiness rates for all Michigan high schools.